Free Final Score: Part One (Game On #5) by Kyra Lennon Page B

Hated how he’d shut down from this already. That instead of explaining, he expected me to do the talking.
    “Dammit, Radleigh! Talk to me!”
    I clenched my fists, ready to pound them against his chest, but he grabbed my wrists to stop me, his fingers curling painfully around the wrist he’d injured earlier. I didn’t care that it hurt, I wanted to inflict some of the agony inside me on him and I fought hard to get free of him, my arms attempting to flail out of his grip.
    “Let go!” I snapped, struggling without success to get him off me. “Get. Off!”
    After one almighty tug I managed to get one hand free and I wasted no time in thudding my fist into his chest, still trying to get my other arm free too. “How could you not tell me?” I screamed. “How could you keep telling me everything was okay?”
    “Leah, stop!” He grabbed the hand that was hitting him and forced both hands down by my sides, using his full strength. I had no choice but to stop struggling and when he was sure I was done fighting him, he let go, leaving me shaking with the rage I’d been forced to suppress. My head pounded, threatening to crack my skull, and I turned away from him, unable to take his silence.
    “She’s lying, Leah. Whatever she’s told you, she’s lying.”
    I took some long, slow breaths. Because, yeah, of course there was every chance she was lying. In fact, I really hadn’t fully considered the repercussions if she wasn’t. I wasn’t angry about her bombshell; I was angry that he hadn’t told me himself.
    “How long have you known?” I asked, my voice dangerously low. “When did she tell you her eldest son is yours, Radleigh?”
    Saying the words out loud made vomit rise in my throat, and I swallowed hard, breathing deeply again. When Jen had told me… when she’d revealed her reasons for returning to Los Angeles, it was as if I’d been temporarily paralysed. “Jayden is Radleigh’s son.” That was all I could hear while the rest of my body shut down. Numbness overtook me so much I barely noticed the smirk of satisfaction she gave me before she left.
    “She told me on Tuesday.”
    Two days ago. Forty-eight hours. And all that time I’d had to deal with him stomping around the house, snapping at me, when he could have just told me and this wouldn’t have felt like so much of a betrayal.
    “Two. Days. Radleigh… why didn’t you tell me?”
    “It’s not true.”
    I spun around to face him. “Really? You just decided it’s not true so I didn’t need to know?”
    “I was going to tell you. I was going to tell you tonight, but you were late back and I overreacted, and Jen-”
    The bark of laughter I let out stopped him mid-sentence.
    “Look, she might be a manipulative, cold-hearted bitch, but don’t think for a second about blaming what happened tonight on her. It was your lies that led to this.”
    He lowered his eyes because he knew he couldn’t deny that. Not that that made me feel any better. In fact, the realisation that he knew what he’d done and didn’t fight to deny it told me my worst fears were already coming true. She was in L.A, and she had already established a hold over him.
    “I just needed some time, okay?” he said. “I know talking to you first would have been the right thing to do. I know that. But she came at me out of nowhere, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t think straight.
    I saw her for the first time in six years on Monday after work. Or, I thought I did. She was across the street from the training ground, but I wasn’t sure it was her and I shrugged it off. On Tuesday, she was actually outside work, waiting for me. And that was the first time I talked to her. She did the same thing yesterday. She was in the diner at lunchtime and that was when she threatened to tell you what she’d told me. But our total conversations haven’t lasted longer than thirty minutes.”
    My eyebrows furrowed. “So, she told you you have a son, and you… what? Just walked